Next Gen Teachers

> Jkylewood

40 Ways to Let Your Passions Shine Through Your Le. You're a teacher.

But you're also a person—with passions and interests and talents that go above and beyond the classroom.
The Connected Culture. If you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of trying to create simplicity from chaos.

That stated, I am more comfortable when a part of (or the instigator of) chaos itself.
The longer you pretend. Shelley Owen commented yesterday that a teacher said to her that “[technology] is not in our contract.”

Wow. It’s one thing to say as an educator, “I understand I need to do this but I need more help and/or support.”
The Age of Common Sense. In the Information Age we are in dramatic need of some intelligence to it all. Information is everywhere, but where is the common sense? Does all the stuff make sense?
Building Within the Box. It has been a little bit more than a week since I returned home from the annual ISTE conference in San Diego.

“Why?” Can Make Change Possible. As principals, we're not afraid to ask a lot of questions when we don't know how to do something.

But what happens to the questions when we discover how to do it? They stop, don't they? If we think we already know the right way to do something, or worse, it's the way we've always done it, how open are we to learning a better way or even a different way? We aren't, are we? Think about the educators in your building.
Lessons Learned. Learning Visually « Living the Dream.

Infographics work in the classroom because they grab students and allow an entry point to learning — and because they sum up pages and pages, even chapters, of information that would take a reader hours to process.

Interactive infographics make kids want to immediately start clicking around to see what’s what. For a teacher who prioritizes an inquiry-driven classroom, that’s a great starting point. Infographics and Data visualization are not just for consumption though, teachers and students can also challenge the learning process by creating original graphics for themselves.
The “You Matter” Manifesto in Education.

One of the underlying but often unspoken themes of this blog is the idea that the individual matters in this crazy, hectic, techno-centric world.

Teachers matter, students matter, administrators matter, higher education faculty matter, adjunct instructors matter, online educators matter, and the individual out there seeking a place in the world also matters. This hidden agenda in the writing on Education Unbound was the reason that Angela Maiers’ You Matter Manifesto immediately demanded a post in this space. Maiers, a former classroom and university teacher and now the owner and lead consultant for Maiers Education Services, has started a movement to make people who otherwise feel insignificant believe that they matter (Maiers, About). 1.

Wake up, teacher. « Love, life & language learning. It’s happening. and it’s happening now – there’s no future perfection to wait for. All there is, and all there ever will be, is here and now. I used to think the real aim of professional development was to wake up the ideal future teaching self that was sleeping inside me.
What Will The Ed Tech Revolution Look Like?
During the past 40 years, accounting for inflation, we have nearly tripled the amount of money we spend per student in public K-12 education.

It was roughly $4,000 in 1971, and last year amounted to $11,000 per student. Over that same period time, our students’ math and verbal test scores have remained unchanged.
A Six-Point Checklist for Education Innovators. This blog is an excerpt from the book Bringing Innovation to School: Empowering Students to Thrive in a Changing World, published June 2012 by Solution Tree.

Whether innovators are drumming up new business ideas or hard at work solving community problems, they share certain characteristics. They tend to be action-oriented.
10 Things in School That Should Be Obsolete. Flickr: Corey Leopold By Greg Stack So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not.

Looking around most school facilities — even those that aren’t old and crumbling — it’s obvious that so much of it is obsolete today, and yet still in wide use. 1. COMPUTER LABS. At Northern Beaches Christian School students learn everywhere.
Create the Environment. I had the amazing opportunity to speak to the Alberta School Boards’ Association (ASBA) and share some of the work that we have been doing in Parkland School Division, and some of the things that I see happening around the world with innovation (here are some of the links that I shared throughout the presentation).

As an educator who works with schools and central office, it was a great opportunity to talk to the leaders of our schools and share the changes we are seeing in society and technology, and how we need to leverage this to prepare kids for not only their future, but in reality, their present.
A Commitment to Digital Learning. New Milford High School proudly joined 37 states, 15,000 teachers, and over 2 million students on February 1 for the inaugural Digital Learning Day.

This day, however, was not really much different than any other day at NMHS as we have made a commitment to integrate digital learning into school culture for some time now. As Principal I am proud to state that many of the pedagogical techniques, learning activities, and tools described in the rest of this post are consistently in use on a daily basis across all content areas. The reason for this is that we have put a premium on creating a teaching and learning culture that better meets the needs of our learners while enhancing essential skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity, media literacy, and global awareness. Below I have summarized some of the pre-planned activities that my teachers planned and had their students engaged in on Digital Learning Day. Image credit:
10 ways to be a great teacher. 4 Ways Technology Helps To Diversify Education. This is why teachers leave teaching. On Thursday, Mark Clarkson wrote a blog post that started off like this: I seriously considered leaving education today.

20 Things New Teachers Need to Know. “Pithy and Trite”
Though we prepare for a much-earned break, the work nonetheless continues at a relentless pace. Akin to the proverbial redesign of an airplane in flight, the transition to the Common Core Essential Standards (CCES) continues with our sights on having our anchor documents completed so that unit and lesson planning can begin in the months leading up to the beginning of the new instructional year in August.
What Makes Good Teachers Great - ASCD Annual Conference 2012. Laura Varlas “In medicine, lives are lost in the slim margins between good and great,” surgeon and Harvard medical professor Atul Gawande told conference attendees at the second general session of ASCD’s Annual Conference.

10 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have. This past January I wrote "10 Tech Skills Every Student Should Have" and I have decided to modify it for the "10 Tech Skills Every Educator Should Have".
What is a 21st century teacher?
People toss around terms in education and attach the words “21st century” to appear cutting edge or on the front end of trending ideas. As a teacher in the 21st century, I find it amazing to see some of the things that are so-called 21st century and yet are no different from ideas from the 20th or even the 19th century. With that in mind, I reflected on what it takes to be a teacher in the 21st century and what such a teacher looks like. Obviously, a 21st-century teacher should be tall, handsome and have a sweet spot for superheroes. Beyond that, I think there are some key characteristics that good 21st-century teachers need.
» The Tool is Not the Problem…Are We? Upside Down Education.